Space, business and humor don’t usually mix. Greg Costikyan’s First Contract (Tor Books, $23.95) may be the first book since Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth’s classic The Space Merchants to bring these concepts together and make them fly.
First Contract is the story of Johnson Mukerjii, a well-to-do Silicon Valley executive who is bringing a revolutionary new display system to market. He has bet his company on his latest invention, but he’s about to lose everything to a benign alien invasion.
Alien traders have come to welcome Earth to the galactic community, offering technological wonders for the small price of the planet Jupiter. It’s a deal that sends Earth’s economy into a tailspin – who needs a Mercedes when they can buy a supersonic flying car, or a holographic display when alien tech can beam virtual reality directly into your brain?
Within months, the stock market index is down to two digits, unemployment is at 50 percent and climbing, and Mukerjii is a homeless bum. It’s the biggest business bust since the fall of the Roman Empire – but Mukerjii has one last brilliant idea to put himself back in business and haul Earth into the galactic economy.
First Contract is an unabashedly comic novel. In-jokes and Dickensian names abound -- the investment bank of "Ponzi Churner," for instance, or a lawyer named "Bartholomew Grind" – and Costikyan launches plenty of zingers at IPOs, trade shows and other staples of big business.
Aztecs or Japanese
It’s telling that the Library of Congress categorizes the book as fiction about high technology, chief executive officers and human-alien contact, in that order. Frivolity aside, though, Costikyan raises an interesting point: if we make contact with an interstellar society, what happens to Earth’s economy?
It’s not unreasonable to suppose that a galactic culture would be thousands or even millions of years ahead of our own. If we’re going to trade with it, what do we have to offer?
In the "Uplift" books, author David Brin gives the backwards Earthclan an economic edge in their unique arts – whale song is a prized music to the Galactics. Costikyan’s Earthlings sell art as well – fortunately, his aliens have no taste, and are as likely to buy a velvet Elvis as a Matisse – but it’s not enough to stop the planet’s descent into poverty.
Costikyan also draws lessons from historical primitives who have encountered more advanced cultures. He draws upon the Aztecs as a culture that failed to learn from encountering Europeans, and the Japanese as a culture that adapted and thrived with European technology.
The million-quatloo question is: when the time comes, will Earth be the Aztecs or the Japanese?
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